“C3PO revolutionizes the network core and it’s part of our expanded toolbox of solutions to meet the coming wave of data in the years ahead,” said Günther Ottendorfer, Chief Operating Officer – Technology, Sprint. “C3PO is an important part of our NFV and SDN initiative, enabling Sprint to adapt more quickly to market demands and scale new services more efficiently and cost-effectively.”

C3PO uses standard high-volume server hardware and streamlines mobile core architecture by collapsing multiple components into as few network nodes as possible. In lab tests conducted on Dell EMC DSS 9000 rack scale infrastructure with compute sleds running dual socket 14 core Intel® Xeon® processors E5-2680 v4, Sprint achieved 1.63 Mpps (million packets per second) throughput. This C3PO configuration demonstrated high efficiency by utilizing as few as seven processor cores - with one packet processing core and six processor cores supporting other tasks such as Control Plane, statistics, load balancer, operating system and other operations, for 500,000 subscribers using a typical Sprint traffic model. A similar C3PO configuration achieved 2.2 Mpps with a similar traffic model for 50,000 subscribers.

Sprint and Intel Labs Collaboration

The availability of the solution is the result of four years of collaboration between Intel Labs and Sprint on a joint research effort to develop optimal DPDK-based data plane nodes and disaggregated evolved packet core architectures, as well as a platform for further 5G core infrastructure research.

“C3PO makes traditional mobility architectures and software designs more streamlined, efficient and scalable,” said Dr. Ron Marquardt, Vice President of Technology at Sprint. “By combining Sprint’s real-world operator knowledge with Intel’s research on optimizing software for standard high-volume servers, we’ve developed a single solution that provides seven functions previously located within separate physical elements.”

C3PO addresses bottlenecks in mobile core packet performance by separating and independently scaling the data plane and control plane. The C3PO architecture collapses multiple evolved packet core and SGi LAN elements in a single data plane instance. A serving gateway, packet gateway, deep packet inspection, child protection, carrier grade NAT, static firewall, and service function chaining, or any combination of these functions, can be collapsed into one data plane instance.

C3PO is designed to be used by global operators and other third-parties as a reference for commercial applications. Intel Labs technologists built the next generation core control plane and data plane virtualized EPC applications, and Sprint developed the SDN controller enhancements. The EPC application code from Intel is available via the CORD project in ON.Lab, and the SDN plug-ins from Sprint are available via OpenDaylight.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is a communications services company that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to the things they care about most. Sprint served 59.7 million connections as of March 31, 2017 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past five years. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.

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